


Kiriya's Morgue of Jumpscares

by DroppedAllTheseOreos



Category: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid
Genre: Corpses, Emetophobia, Gen, Minor Character Death, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:58:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16495772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DroppedAllTheseOreos/pseuds/DroppedAllTheseOreos
Summary: Jungo has a weak constitution, Kiriya being... well, himself, doesn't help at all.





	1. Flight

Jungo's constitution was weak at the best of times. Why he was in one of the more mentally taxing jobs in the medical field was anyone's guess. Even he questioned his job choice sometimes. He was skittish by nature. On top of that, his siblings were brats when they were younger, taking every opportunity to scare him. They’d tell him horror stories late at night, coerce him into watching scary movies and find ever more creative ways to emulate those awful films to terrorize him. They insisted their pranks would toughen him up and make him braver. But they only trained him to be on high alert constantly. Now that they were all older, his siblings laughed and looked back on those times as fond memories, while Jungo struggled to keep the terrified look out of his eyes as he laughed along, pretending the trauma was nothing.

In addition to his general courage being, somewhat lacking, his courage in social situations left something to be desired as well. He was just starting out at Seito Hospital and already felt like an outsider. Nishiwaki and Kiriya seemed close and had been working together for a few months already. Kiriya's tendency towards intimate physical contact was intimidating, and Nishiwaki had to explain that he hadn't grown up in Japan, so his grasp on what was comfortable to most people here was lacking. He seemed completely fine with Kiriya's touch, however. What's more, Kiriya even called him by a nickname, not that Nishiwaki appreciated it but he let it happen, so that had to be some kind of indicator on their closeness.

On the other hand, Nishiwaki was relatively stoic. He was a nice enough guy, but he always seemed to have a disapproving aura to him that intimidated Jungo in an entirely different way. Kiriya explained that it was just "work Nisshi" and that he was a really nice, easy going guy who was just a touch awkward. But when he entered the workplace, he insisted on being professional. He joked that Nisshi did it to balance out how chill he was. They had already been scolded by some of the nurses for "unprofessionalism," so Nisshi worked hard to make them both look competent and wished Kiriya would be at least a little more focused, hence the radiation of "disappointed dad vibes" whenever Kiriya was too casual while they worked.

Jungo felt uncomfortable trying to find his place with these two, but could never find the words to voice his feelings. He ended up relying on Nishiwaki's perceptiveness to call Kiriya off when an arm casually thrown around his shoulders became too awkward to bear, or his chattiness was getting out of hand. He also had to rely on Kiriya's boldness to tell Nishiwaki to maybe try and tone the seriousness down whenever he picked up on Jungo's nervous energy. Despite his inability to speak his mind around them, he really wanted to find his place in this hospital and make a good impression on them. They genuinely seemed to care about his comfort, and he wanted to express his gratitude somehow, and maybe, eventually find a place in their lives. He just so happened to be an early riser anyway, so he decided his first step could be coming in early and get a head start on prepping their workspace.

He felt happy about his internal clock wanting to wake up early for once and opened the door to the morgue in high spirits. The second he got the door open, the light from the hall illuminated the pitch black morgue. No one was in sight, but a distressed groan echoed from a dark corner, followed by a thud and a loud clattering of metal tools hitting the ground. Jungo’s fearful imagination flew into overdrive. He slammed the door shut, pressing his back against it and panting heavily.

After a few tense moments, he finally found it in himself to slow his breathing and begin to relax. He was about to pull away from the door when he felt pressure against his shoulder blades and heard the door handle clicking as someone from inside was trying to get it open. He pushed back with all his might. He had to keep whatever was in there contained. Was he actually experiencing a haunting from a restless spirit? Could this be the first case of a zombie outbreak? Had a murderer broken into the hospital last night and was lying in wait for their next victim?

A pounding started up on the other side of the door, and Jungo’s heart almost leaped from his ribcage. He was tempted to look back, but steeled himself and kept pressure on the door. The adrenaline coursing through his system and his heartbeat pounding in his ears drowned out any other sensations as he honed his focus to a singular point of holding the door closed with all his strength. He had to keep this contained until Nishiwaki arrived. He always had a cool head and knew what to do.

And that’s how Nishiwaki found him, ten minutes later, an absolute anxious mess barricading a distressed looking Kiriya in the morgue as he pounded on the door, yelling for Jungo to open up because he had to pee.

 

...

 

“So how does some undead thing, pounding on the door, calling your name and asking to use the bathroom make sense?” Kiriya asked once they’d all settled into their work on their respective cases.

Jungo spluttered and dropped his case files, the papers burst out of their folder on impact and scattered everywhere. “I told you, I didn’t hear anything you were saying because I was freaking out too much!”

Nishiwaki barely spared them a glance from his notes where he was recording instances of trauma on the body he was working with. “Can we focus on our work here guys?” Kiriya looked like he was about to respond with something witty, but Nishiwaki quickly cut him off, “Kiriya, just drop it. What were you even doing here this early?”

Jungo stopped picking up his files and looked up to squint at Kiriya suspiciously. “He has a point. What _were_ you doing here? Don’t you usually come late?”

Kiriya huffed out a laugh. “Jeez you guys, I thought we were supposed to be investigating a crime here, not my personal life.”

And that’s all it took for him to go back to analyzing the shattered ribcage of the corpse and searching through the organs and flesh for bone fragments. Jungo shot a worried look to Nishiwaki, but the other examiner wasn’t paying attention, leaving Jungo to wonder what Kiriya was up to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a few more ideas of what to do with this concept, but ran out of time to write it all before Halloween when I planned to have this up, so I'm just gonna take it easy with this piece and let it come together more naturally. Doesn't hurt to extend the spirit of Halloween a little past October, right?


	2. Fight

Over the course of the next few months, Jungo found himself settling in with Nishiwaki and Kiriya better than he could’ve ever imagined it going. Kiriya to a lesser degree since he still hadn’t opened up on what he was doing in the morgue that one time and Jungo remained suspicious of him. In that time, Jungo and Nishiwaki had also discovered some lightbulb candles and a plastic skull which didn’t help to ease Jungo’s mind at all. Nishiwaki quickly rattled off a short list of reasons why they could’ve been there, and Jungo smiled politely while his brain began screaming in absolute terror.

  
There were a few more incidents of Kiriya seemingly staying overnight in the hospital that Jungo happened to be the unfortunate victim of. Nishiwaki ended up setting a routine with him and started coming in earlier to help keep Jungo grounded if it happened again.

  
He tried to ask Kiriya about it, but he felt his throat burn and clog with the words every time he wanted to bring it up. Nishiwaki ended up grilling Kiriya about his overnight stays when they happened, but Kiriya remained cryptic, redirecting attention to other topics or just shrugging and keeping silent. Jungo felt a little jealous of how Nishiwaki and Kiriya were able to just ask questions that Jungo considered invasive or weird to voice. He silently swore he’d get better at speaking without needing Nishiwaki’s presence as a crutch.

  
As their situation would have it, Jungo got plenty of time to practice. Nishiwaki was their team’s pathologist, so he was the main person conducting the autopsies. This meant he was often between multiple tasks and conversing with everyone else on the team to make sure the case was well documented and the procedure went smoothly. In addition, his sister Riko would visit often. Turns out when something wasn’t related to work, Nishiwaki tended to be a little forgetful, if the number of times Riko showed up with a bento box, playfully scolding him for always forgetting his lunch was any indication. Whenever she visited, they’d usually go away to talk. Jungo and Kiriya spotted them in the waiting room once, their expressions grim, obviously talking about something serious, so they gave the siblings a wide berth, not wanting to pry. It was much later in their friendship when he opened up about still living with his parents because his mother was devastatingly sick, so they were trying to spend as much time with her as possible while helping to care for her. Everything Nishiwaki had going on caused him to be away a lot of the time when they weren’t operating, leaving Jungo and Kiriya alone.

  
There was palpable tension between them when Nishiwaki would leave. Jungo fought the urges to ask ridiculous questions like “Are you a serial killer? Because we found a plastic skull and my overactive imagination finds that extremely incriminating.” The worst part of that was Kiriya would answer extremely seriously and send Jungo into a further panic since he could never tell when Kiriya was joking. Kiriya would laugh and try to encourage Jungo to calm down, but he didn’t have the same aura as Nishiwaki that Jungo needed to keep himself grounded. He kept telling himself this was good because if he could get over himself and actually talk to Kiriya, that would be one step closer to his goal of being able to communicate like a socially capable human being.

  
Eventually, Jungo managed to break the tension a little bit. He finally vomited some garbled words in the semblance of human speech about the weird items that kept appearing in the morgue. He impressed himself because Kiriya looked at an absolute loss for words for the first time since they’d met.

  
“Could… you… clarify that for me please?” He managed to say after squinting at Jungo like there was something suspicious about him but he couldn’t figure out what for a minute.

  
Jungo took a deep breath before trying to speak again, his stress written all over his face. “We found a skull? And I just wanted to know if it was yours and how it got there—Oh God wait. Not like, your actual skull, it’s plastic! Uh, or, that must’ve been obvious—anyway it’s really weird, you know? All these other suspicious items have been appearing too, and it’s been freaking me out honestly.”

  
Kiriya paused, Jungo barely picked up on a flicker of concern on his face before he laughed. “Oh yeah, don’t worry about that, I’m just holding some stuff for my cousin. Must’ve forgotten them here.”

  
Jungo let out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding. “Oh well, that’s a relief to hear.”

  
Kiriya nudged Jungo with his shoulder playfully. “Sorry to make you freak out like that.”

  
Jungo shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. “It’s okay, maybe just, leave a note next time?”

  
“I’ll keep it in mind.”

…

Almost a week later, they got some new autopsy technician interns. This proved problematic on multiple levels. The first problem was Kiriya sleeping over to unintentionally startle some unsuspecting victim was no longer isolated to just Jungo, and now the whole forensics team knew about it. The rest of the forensics team quickly dubbed the events “Kujo Incidents.” Some of the newbies tried to arrive early and make a good impression and accidentally woke Kiriya. Jungo and Nishiwaki quickly intervened after finding them in a strangely familiar situation that morning. They held a team meeting and told everyone else not to worry about set up. The technicians were at a loss, but let them set up the autopsies from there on out since the two were insistent and they’d rather not deal with a half-asleep Kiriya without Nishiwaki and Jungo anyways.

  
Their supervisor ended up pulling the three of them away after the third intern-involved situation occurred and asked if everything was okay. Jungo and Nishiwaki both looked to Kiriya, who smiled and innocently said “Everything’s fine. Sorry for being a hassle. I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  
Jungo and Nishiwaki exchanged a quick, skeptical look at each other, before also apologizing and thanking the supervisor for the concern.

  
The second problem was that the interns were not prepared. During their first operation, they were all in various states of panic. A formalin jar got dropped with a kidney inside, one of them passed out at seeing the brain being removed, and one of them would just not stop puking, probably from sensitivity to the stench of the preserving chemicals. The core team of technicians had to step in and escort them all out, leaving their jobs to Kiriya and Jungo.

  
In comparison, the current forensics team was jaded and had grown close through shared misery. The initial misery bonds eventually evolved into strong team cohesion and friendship since they’d all seen each other through extremely low points.

  
Jungo remembered being like the interns when he started. Those first few months were absolute hell, suffering through the embarrassment of throwing up, breaking down crying and worrying every second that he wasn’t doing enough.

  
Members of the forensic team saw him through all the hard times. Nishiwaki stopped the autopsy, handing it over to Kiriya so he could escort Jungo to the bathroom when his puking grew disconcertingly violent. He encouraged him that he’d get used to it eventually, and this was something they all went through. There was another instance where Kiriya followed him and one of the photographers out of the autopsy room when they broke down crying over a case where their victim was a child. He brought them water bottles and sat with them in the hallway until they were calm. The photographer returned to the operation after a while, but Jungo was still rattled. It took a while, and he was surprised Kiriya had stuck with him even after the autopsy was done and most of the staff left, people on the night shift starting to trickle in.

  
After those first few draining months, he started being able to help back. Kiriya pulled too many all-nighters over the course of one of their more difficult cases. Nothing added up and he obsessively ran through the timeline again and again until he collapsed during a re-inspection of the victim’s organs. Jungo helped carry him out and put him on one of the available patient beds. One of their technicians, Ishida, was ridiculously efficient when it came to suturing bodies closed but voiced her fears of inadequacy to Jungo one day. He sat with her in the waiting room after their shift and talked about how he felt that way too when he started and assured her she was doing great.

  
The grueling work with the team quickly dashed Jungo’s worries of not belonging. The forensics team became a second family to people who stuck it out long enough to be absorbed into it. And that’s why he hoped the interns stayed on despite bad first impressions with Kiriya and their general squeamishness about autopsies that partially came from the viscera and part from the anxiety that they would screw everything up. Jungo trusted Ishida to handle her understudies but this, unfortunately, left clean-up duty to him and Kiriya. Nishiwaki and the rest of the team headed out to sort out the documentation as Jungo and Kiriya began the slow process of cleaning up.

  
As Jungo closed the corpse and Kiriya labeled and sorted the preservation jars, Jungo worried about the awkward tension between them. Somehow his thoughts turned to horror movies and the situations his panicked brain would think of when he was startled. And that lead to thoughts on how Kiriya would probably spend more time antagonizing whatever evil force was after them and die first. If he were honest with himself, Kiriya would probably have been the one that summoned whatever was after them due to the appearance of more suspicious items in the morgue.

  
He was about to ask about the items again when he just blurted out, “You know if we ever ended up in a horror movie together you’d probably be the first one to die.”  
Kiriya was stunned and just looked at him for a moment before bursting out into laughter.

  
He threw an arm around Jungo’s shoulders, startling the suture needle out of his hand. “You’d probably die right with me since you have to think too much before you do anything.” He fired back with a big smile on his face. “It’s okay, I’ll protect you long enough to figure out where to run and hide.”

  
He spluttered and shoved Kiriya off him as the other man let out another laugh. Kiriya did have a point, he was relatively fit and knew enough martial arts to hold his own. Or at least, Jungo figured he knew enough if the high kicks when he was showing off and the defensive stance he went into if he was startled were any indications. The conversation went on, with them poking at each other’s flaws and reasons why they’d die in different horrible situations.

  
Usually, thinking about things like this would set Jungo on edge, but now that he’d been put through the wringer on the job, death was an everyday occurrence and didn’t scare him as much as it used to.

  
“You know, I _have_ gotten better at handling you when you stay overnight nowadays.” Jungo said as he finished up the last few stitches on the corpse.

  
“Oh yeah? I guess you do _handle_ me pretty good.” Kiriya said with the slightest undertone of flirtation in his voice, and Jungo groaned.

  
Never in a million years, did Jungo think that his secondary response to that would be hip-checking Kiriya and scoffing, “Get your mind out of the gutter.” But that’s what he did.

  
Jungo couldn’t believe it, but he was starting to grow a resistance against Kiriya. Over the next few days, he found it easier and easier to deal with him. Maybe it was the constant long-term exposure, the fact that he had a whole team of close friends that were relying on him to be competent or a combination of both, but he found he was able to move after the initial jolt of a scare instead of staying frozen and catastrophizing the situation for a minute or so. It was weird to think about, but he couldn’t help but feel a little thankful to Kiriya for giving him the tools to fight his fear.


	3. Fright?

Jungo felt numb. Kiriya had proved too much for his fragile heart, and he was sure it had stopped by now. He thought that he was actually growing a resistance to the embodiment of fear that decided to manifest in his life as Kujo fucking Kiriya, but he’d been wrong. He’d been so, _so_ wrong. Kiriya unintentionally upped his game after Jungo thought he was gaining some courage. Jungo came into the morgue one day, ready to set up after getting his newfound confidence, but when he moved towards the operating table, a hand shot out and grabbed his ankle. He let out an unholy scream and fell to the floor, only to realize Kiriya had decided to sleep on the bottom shelf of the table and sleep-grabbed him. And that was just the beginning. He’d been startled and scared out of his wits so many different ways over the past seven months that Kiriya achieved what Jungo’s siblings never could: Jungo’s absolute resistance to fear.

Maybe his siblings had contributed a little and started him down the path to become this husk, but Kiriya only perfected and completed their work. Kiriya must’ve successfully killed him and brought him back to life, a real case of Doctor Frankenstein and his monster. Nishiwaki asked him if he was okay the last time Kiriya popped up in the morgue since Jungo barely reacted and just pushed him into the hall. He said he was fine, but maybe he really wasn’t, since he felt like death this morning as he came to terms with the fact that Kiriya had successfully broken him. He arrived at work like usual and greeted Nishiwaki halfheartedly.

“You look terrible. You sure you don’t want to take off?”

Jungo shook his head but was abruptly halted by Nishiwaki reaching out and feeling his forehead.

“Hm, you don’t have a fever, but I can do set up today if you’re not feeling up to it.”

Jungo waved dismissively. “It’s okay, I’m fine, really.”

Nishiwaki looked at him concernedly for a moment, but thankfully dropped it and Jungo gave him a small smile in thanks.

They entered the morgue together and both immediately froze. The whole place was covered in spider webs, fake bugs and a mix of familiar paper and plastic decorations that they’d found throughout the last two months. The only place that was safe from the mess was the freezers where the bodies were kept. They looked at each other, Jungo in disbelief and Nishiwaki with exasperation. It was then that they noticed the body bag set up on the operating table and approached it.

This was totally off protocol, and Nishiwaki said as much, turning towards the door to look around for any autopsy technicians that were around to ask what was going on when the bag suddenly moved.

Usually, this is when Jungo would freeze and go into total panic mode before running away. Instead he just opened the bag, and out popped Kiriya, growling at them like a zombie, some rudimentary makeup on his face to make him look gored and undead. Jungo expected a fist to fly out of the corner of his vision as Nishiwaki instinctively defended himself and decked Kiriya, but it never came.

Kiriya quickly noticed that they weren’t reacting at all and dropped his act. They all stared at each other in awkward silence for what felt like an uncomfortable eternity. “Um… Happy Halloween?” Kiriya shrugged with a slightly embarrassed grin.

Nishiwaki sighed deeply, hands half together and half covering his face in some weird fusion of trying to hide his face and prayer. The parts of his expression that could be seen read only as disappointment and a longing for the sweet release of death to get out of this situation.

Jungo just looked between Kiriya and Nishiwaki, lips pressed together tightly, brows furrowed in some weird mix of curiosity and exasperation that Kiriya read as a “why are you like this.”

“So…” Kiriya continued, “Now you know why I’ve been sleeping in the morgue all this time!” He held his hands out and shook them a bit in the saddest display of jazz hands any of them had experienced in their lives.

After a beat, Jungo placed his hands on both of Kiriya’s shoulders, shoving him back down on the table and zipping the bag closed again.


	4. Friends

“You lied to us, and friends shouldn’t do that to friends.”

Despite the warmth of the sun on his face, Kiriya felt a chill down his spine in reaction to disappointed dad vibes. He willed away the bad memories that threatened to bring up and opened his eyes. Squinting against the sun, he made out Jungo standing over him, a serious expression on his face, Nisshi standing a little behind him, radiating disappointment more powerfully than Kiriya had ever experienced before.

“What do you mean by that?” He sat up from the bench he was laying on for his break, genuinely curious as to what Jungo meant.

“Nothing adds up.” He sat down next to Kiriya huffily now that the space was freed, Nisshi slid in to sit at his other side.

“You said that you were staying overnight because you were trying to smuggle Halloween decorations into the morgue and autopsy rooms without raising suspicion.” Nisshi states cooly. “It’d be believable if this was happening over the course of the month, not over the course of the year.”

Kiriya hoped his smile was coming off as casual and easy. “Well, if you wanna be discrete you gotta do the unexpected right?”

“Yeah, but why would you do that just for one holiday? It’s not even a day off or really big in Japan.” Jungo shot back.

“And don’t say it’s because you’re from America, you haven’t done this for any other traditionally American holidays that aren’t big here.” Nisshi added quickly.

Kiriya’s smile faltered a little and knew he already lost, but his pride made him feel like he had to keep trying to pull off this charade. “How do you know I’m not setting up a Thanksgiving thing?”

“Because you called it a racist corporate shill and you only enjoyed it because it was an excuse to get your family together when we asked about it.” Nisshi at least had the decency to not look smug when he said it. “Since you only talk about family in Hawaii, I’m assuming you’re not going to be celebrating this year.”

“And you were really cryptic about it the whole time. Like in the ‘you didn’t wanna talk about it’ way instead of the ‘playing a prank on us’ way. Trust me,” Jungo put his hand on Kiriya’s to get his full attention. “I grew up with two older siblings who’d terrorize me all the time, I know the all the tells and body language of someone trying to hide a prank. You didn’t do anything like that.”

“We’re medical examiners too, Kiriya.” Nisshi nudged him with his shoulder. “I know you forget sometimes, but we can read your tells. We all wouldn’t be here together if we didn’t have good insight.”

Kiriya sighed heavily, looking down to try and avoid their gazes as he collected himself. He did need to give them more credit.

“I had a falling out with my parents.” He let out shakily. “I. It was-- I shouldn’t have...” He ran his hand through his hair, fighting the urge to just get up and run or cover his face and wait until they left.

Jungo squeezed his hand. “The details of it aren’t important.”

Kiriya pressed his lips together and nodded silently, gathering himself. “Anyways, they kicked me out, and ever since my money situation’s been fucked. So I’ve kinda been struggling with balancing money I got from part time jobs to put myself through school and having a place to live. Um… I slept on campus a lot I was able to just pass that off as exam stress and me overworking myself.”

Nisshi leaned on him a little more, hoping the weight of his presence was more reassuring than suffocating. He sighed a little in relief when Kiriya leaned back on him and continued.

“I’m really close with one of my cousins. She lets me stay with her while I find a place. Like she said I could stay with her as long as I needed, but she’s married with kids and it’s hard on her already, y’know? So sometimes I just tell her I have to stay for a case or some other thing and sleep at the hospital.”

“Why didn’t you ask either of us for help?” Jungo blurted.

He felt Kiriya’s hand tense under his. “We’ve barely known each other for a year, and it’s too much to ask from just work friends.”

The ‘just’ stung at Jungo more than he would’ve liked to admit. He’d struggled to get to this point of comfort with Kiriya and it hurt to hear that he regarded their friendship as much more precious than Kiriya seemed to. He looked over to Nisshi for back up but he was just looking at his lap disappointedly. They all knew he couldn’t offer anything even if he wanted to help because of the situation with his family being what it was.

He sucked in a nervous breath and nudged Kiriya to get him to look him in the eye. “You’re more than ‘just a work friend’ to me. Uh, I… I struggle with rent sometimes just because housing in this area is kinda ridiculous, you probably already know because you’ve probably been looking for a place around here… Anyways, what I’m getting at is… If you need a place to stay when you can’t stay at your cousins, you can stay with me? Maybe just help me pay for groceries for the trouble if you really feel obligated to do something about it… but really you don’t need to worry about it... And… uh.”

Kiriya fixed him with a skeptical look before it turned more intrigued, prompting him to continue.

“And, after a while, if it turns out we could be good roommates… Maybe you can stay with me? No guarantees though, you’re definitely gonna have to prove yourself. But at least you can keep taking strain off your cousin and you don’t have to sleep in the morgue anymore.”

Kiriya’s face fell slack before his breath stuttered and he started laughing. Jungo was about to take offense again but when he looked a little closer Kiriya had moved to cover his face and Jungo managed to see tears before he hastily wiped them away.

“I don’t deserve this.” He choked out.

Jungo just squeezed his hand in response, hoping that said everything he wanted to try communicate. He knew Kiriya would just get defensive if he tried to insist that he was absolutely deserving of help from his friends.

The rest of their break was spent on the bench, Nisshi and Jungo holding onto Kiriya as he struggled to get himself back together. They were all a mess in their own respective ways, but Kiriya couldn’t have asked for better friends to watch him break down and trust they’d support him as he’d try to put himself back together.


End file.
